U.S. officials are weighing a proposal that could see the federal government take stakes in leading artificial intelligence providers.
The discussions were first reported by news outlet NOTUS late Thursday. According to Politico, President Donald Trump confirmed the report today during a press briefing aboard Air Force One. Trump stated that he will likely meet with representatives of “all the big” AI developers at the White House next week.
The report didn’t specify the companies that could be involved in the initiative. OpenAI Group PBC Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman visited Washington, D.C., earlier this week to meet with administration officials. Dario Amodei, his counterpart at Anthropic PBC, held discussions at the White House in April.
“There’s a concept out there, there’s so much money and it’s so big that there are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies,” Trump said today.
The size of the stakes that the government would take in the participating AI companies is unclear. However, NOTUS reported that the returns provided by the investment could be used to issue a dividend to American households. The publication’s sources added that the details of the initiative are still in flux.
CNBC reported today that White House officials have been discussing the idea with Sam Altman for over a year. Under the proposed plan, OpenAI would donate equity to the government. The shares would reportedly be used to finance an investment vehicle that would enable Americans to share in the profits of AI companies.
The fund could reportedly be similar to the “Public Wealth Fund” that OpenAI proposed in a recent policy paper. According to the document, the investment vehicle would back frontier model developers and companies that are using AI in their business operations. OpenAI stated that the fund’s returns could be distributed to U.S. households.
Earlier this week, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed that the government take a 50% stake in AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Trump addressed the idea today by stating that “as far as economics is concerned, we have certain things that aren’t that far apart. People are surprised.”
The development comes a few weeks after the U.S. Commerce Department agreed to issue $2.013 billion in grants to IBM Corp., GlobalFoundries Inc. and seven other players in the quantum computing market. The U.S. government will receive shares in exchange for the funds. The equity that GlobalFoundries, a publicly traded chip manufacturer, plans to provide reportedly amounts to a 1% stake.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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